Introduction. Missing stories
1. A meal by Martha
Envisioning a foodshed
Nature in Martha's garden
Tales of turkeys
The energy of eating
Consciousness of cookery
2. To market, to market
The transcription of kitchen know-how
To market
Who did the shopping?
3. Mystifying the mundane
Place of origin
The waning of wild foods
The abstraction of animals' lives
4. Denaturing the senses
The debut of cans
The power of labels
The mimicry of margarine
Eating by eye
5. A new longing for nature
The civility of cookery
The grounding nature of growing food
The unseemliness of stewed songbirds
The all-natural body
Allure of the natural
6. Rise of the modern food sensibility
Bolstering brand names and promoting packages
The home economists' twist
Not-so-contented cows
The appeal of the modern
Nature transcended
7. The covenant of ignorance
New food chains : the rise of supermarket shopping
100 million guinea pigs
The secrets of DDT
For convenience sake
Hidden on supermarket shelves
8. Kitchen countertrends
The persistence of the natural
Burgers and rain forests
A purposeful palate
Turning attention back to farms
Epilogue. Returning stories to the modern kitchen.